Reconstructing Identity: Depictions of the Personality and Home of John Aubrey in Patrick Garland’s Play Brief Lives

Reconstructing identity is a common practice within theatre design. When the performance focuses on the personality of a single person, the reconstruction goes beyond the superficial and become signifier of the life once lived. One practitioner who worked with this idea was Julia Trevelyan Oman, who collaborated with Patrick Garland for his Brief Lives in 1967. It is a one-man play, acted notably by Roy Dotrice, which focused on a retelling of John Aubrey and the creation of his book, Brief Lives. The set of this play draws on every known aspect of Aubrey’s life, toying with the notion of a collector of both stories and artefacts, in a chaotic, overflowing and overwhelming atmosphere built from the careful collection and placement of over 2,500 props, many of which were antiques in the time of Aubrey. Oman’s design style can be described as a detail focused naturalism, which she employed on this production with excess. Each prop was carefully chosen, collected and placed by Oman to signify different elements of Aubrey’s life, with the intention of building his identity. At the time, this performance held a record number of props, which contributed to its fame. Garland described the design as a ‘Jacobean kitchen sink’, the purpose was to bring the lesser-known historical figure to life. The result is a reconstructed home, showcasing the identity of the man now since displaced, in their attempt to reinstate him as the significant social historian he was. This paper will focus on the use of set design to build identity through depictions of the home, how Oman created a home signifying Aubrey as belonging in our modern world and the notoriety this brought the production and the person they were elevating.